New Story -- Chapter 39

Chapter 39

Placing her hands on the stone floor of the dungeon, Sarah was barely able to push herself upright as the powerful Level Compression faded away. While she and the others in her party had felt hints of the phenomenon they were taught during Training throughout the Mausoleum of Despair dungeon, the Level Compression felt from encountering a being with a significantly higher Level than someone was almost impossibly strong. At times it felt like gravity had suddenly increased tenfold in the area as she was forced to her knees and then to the floor against her will; try as she could, the Novice Druid was completely helpless to move in the presence of the Monarch of the Dead, Nehetmo.

I never would’ve imagined that I would not only see a Level 75 monster on my first day on Tarth, but also likely be amongst its first victims. How did I ever let this ignorant psycho convince me to continue through the dungeon after seeing what awaited us in the very first room? Everything in here is at least 5 Levels higher than Thaden, and the Boss is 40 Levels higher! Even he is forced by the Level Compression to fall to his knees, so what hope do we have?

At first, she couldn’t quite believe how uninformed the crazy healer had been when he admitted not knowing how to loot a monster corpse – or even about his Inventory! She had seen the pack he carried and figured that his Inventory was simply full, though at his higher Level it should’ve had the volume of a shipping container. Her own was only a little bigger than a school locker, but it would increase in size as she Leveled up. If she could’ve used her accumulated PICK to increase her Level right now, she would’ve, but it was only able to be done outside of dungeons.

Of course, the likelihood of that happening was rather slim at that point. Sure, the insanely powerful Lifewarden had luckily held his own against the Undead that infested the various rooms throughout the dungeon, as well as the insane waves of powerful monsters here in the Boss room, but that luck had run out. Not only were there three enormous Undead Mini Bosses that Thaden had to fight, but they were all twice his Level! She thought the Monarch was bad enough, but at this point there really wasn’t that much difference between a Level 70 and a Level 75 monster when someone was a much lower Level. No matter if Thaden had somehow managed to hold off the other Undead, who ranged from Level 40 to Level 54, there was no way he would be able to withstand the onslaught of such high-Level Undead.

They were all dead, but the foolish Support Class refused to believe it.

Sarah felt both sore and wrung out, as if her body had been smashed into the floor and then twisted in half, to the point where she couldn’t get up from her knees at the moment if her life depended on it. Of course, her life did depend on moving to somewhere safe in order to survive, but there was nowhere to go even if she managed to get to her feet. Instead, all she could do was witness Thaden bravely running forward to his death, while shouting back at them.

“I’m putting some distance between us so that you don’t get hit with something!”

With defeated eyes, she shrugged even as he ran toward danger, knowing that it really wouldn’t matter. Although none of them had been hurt throughout the three consecutive waves of Undead, thanks to a bit of physical separation from the impossible healer and the protective shields that he cast over them, she knew that it wouldn’t matter how far he ran away, because as soon as he fell, they would be next.

“I’m sorry, everyone,” she said softly, looking at Aki, Rayana, and Diallo in turn. “I should’ve held to my initial conviction to leave this dungeon as soon as I knew what we were up against.”

“It’s not your fault,” Diallo said softly, even as Thaden engaged the three Mini Bosses in the distance. “I think the allure of easy PICK, money, and loot that we didn’t have to endanger ourselves to obtain was our downfall. We were too greedy, too willing to believe that he was powerful enough to carry us through a dungeon.”

“You were right, though,” Sarah said, shaking her head – which took more energy than she thought it would. “We should’ve just stayed on a steady, safe course, and we wouldn’t be in this mess right now. I’m sorry for pushing the others to convince you of this stupid idea.”

“If it was a stupid idea, I would’ve have gone along with it,” the Apprentice Fire Mage refuted, laying a hand on her shoulder consolingly. “I think the execution left a lot to be desired, but overall it was a decent idea. And imagine if it had worked! I mean, I didn’t do the calculations, but I believe we’ve earned enough to push us past Level 6, possibly Level 7 by this point.”

She nodded, knowing exactly what he was saying. While they had only earned around 12 to 15 PICK each for the majority of the Undead that were slain in the dungeon, Thaden had killed a lot of them on their way to the Boss room. Then, with the waves of dozens of Undead, that total went up even more. She could feel the PICK inside her body, pulsing in its reservoir as it waited to be used as fuel for advancing in Level.

Then there was the loot! She had been keeping track of how much she’d earned from the Extraction split, and she was nearing nearly 8 gold’s worth of currency, which was incredible. And it wasn’t just her that received it, but everyone in the party – though Thaden likely received more because of his higher Level. It was already enough to sustain them through Level 21 in terms of lodging, food, and upgrades to their equipment if they didn’t find anything from the monsters themselves. She had been looking forward to getting back to town to check out the Charee crafters there, as the Contenders had been taught that – while they weren’t able to make anything too powerful – the non-Contenders in the world could make some pretty wonderful stuff for Levels 1 through about 30 or so.

Unfortunately, the various items that they’d picked up throughout the dungeon – other than crafting items and resources – were all for those Level 40 and up, in addition to having some fairly nasty drawbacks like heavy decreases to the Personality stat. She didn’t know for sure, but she was fairly certain that Thaden was wearing a robe he had acquired in the dungeon at some point, as that would explain the initial feelings of disgust she felt in seeing it. She just wished that she could use Identify on items that other people were wearing, but it didn’t work that way.

Hmm. I wonder if Thaden knows about Identify? I figured he did if he was wearing robe he picked up from somewhere, but now I don’t know. It’s too bad that I’ll probably never get a chance to ask—

“Hey, look. He’s not dead yet.”

Sarah was booted out of her introspection by Rayana, who was staring at the fight ahead of them with rapt attention. The Novice Druid had to admit to herself that she had pretty much written off the Lifewarden from being able to survive and had blocked out what was happening because she didn’t want to see him die. She wasn’t sure if it was just because she didn’t want to see the ignorant man who had literally resurrected her die, or because she refused to watch the semi-playful light within his eyes fade away in death, but there was just something about him that played havoc with her emotions.

You know, if it hadn’t been that cheesy, confident smile he gave me back at the start of this dungeon, I don’t think I would’ve given in no matter how greedy I was feeling.

“How is he still alive?” she murmured to herself.

Thaden was on his knees but upright, the pressure of the Level Compression that the three Mini Bosses were pushing down on him were each less than what the Monarch could produce, but it was still more than Sarah would’ve been able to take. She felt a bit of it even though it wasn’t directed at her, and she could only marvel at how he hadn’t succumbed to the mind-numbingly powerful effect.

And it wasn’t that he hadn’t succumbed, it was that he was literally fighting through it to the point where it didn’t seem to bother him. Even as she watched him being literally bombarded with enormous, fast-moving bolts of dark-green and black necrotic energy sent flying at him by Lavestina, The Lady Lich, the protective shield around him seemed to simply suck in the spell and made it disappear. Thaden was barely visible as the entire area around him was filled with a fog of super-chilled air thanks to Casetkus, Prince of the Grave, which the Novice Druid could feel hints of even though she was at least 200 feet away from the ongoing fight, but it was also sucked up by the shield surrounding the healer as if was nothing.

Then there was the pounding he was enduring by both the Prince and The Royal Companion, the latter of which was using every portion of its bony body to try and smear Thaden into the floor, but all of the blows bounced off him as if he was made of rubber, with no visible sign that he was even fazed by it in the least. Sarah had seen him preventing damage from quite a few Undead by this point in the dungeon, and as impossible as it seemed, it was obvious that he was able to tank even this type of abuse.

What kind of spell or effect is that? How does he still have even the slightest bit of Mana at this point to cast it? Even if he had a 1,000 Mentality, he’s got to run out sometime, doesn’t he? Or, did he find some sort of all-powerful item that gives him complete immunity from damage and it isn’t a spell at all? Whatever it is, what I’m seeing is completely unbelievable.

Three months of Training wasn’t enough to make her an expert on such things, of course, but every Contender was taught about the limitations of the body when it came to Mana, spells, and abilities – and this man seemed to contradict all of it. She was told that PICK was required to increase their Levels, but it did more than just give someone a few stats and a fancy new number that they could show off to say that they were better others. In reality, the PICK invested in their Levels were used to strengthen the body so that it could handle more Mana, become physically stronger, and to better understand the complicated spells and abilities that were unlocked and chosen when Leveling up.

But Thaden seemed to have extremely powerful spells that didn’t seem consistent with the normal progression of spells that Contenders would possess at his Level, and his seemingly endless amounts of Mana at his fingertips was not just uncommon, but impossible. Even if he had an item that was protecting him, the healing spells which damaged the Undead were being used far too often to be readily explained; more than that, she had yet to see him cast a spell that wasn’t cast instantly, and she knew for a fact that most spells that Support Class people used had at least a small casting time, if not requiring to be constantly channeled in order to maintain them.

But not so Thaden. He was an impossibility wrapped in an enigma… and he was not only surviving against a trio of Level 70 Mini Bosses at half their Level, but he was actually winning.

“I think the Prince is going down,” Aki said a few second later, and Sarah had to agree. The massive Undead was looking even more ragged than it had at the start, and cracks in its bony hands were obvious even from a distance. The same could be said for Trunky, the Royal Companion, though it seemed to have a lot more durability in the old bones of which it was constructed.

What was crazy about it was that it didn’t seem as though Thaden had even changed up his tactics. The same sort of healing spells she’d seen over and over were cast repeatedly, whittling down the Health of the three enormous Undead through a battle of attrition that promised the same outcome as before.

That was before Lavestina turned from mindlessly and fruitlessly attacking the Lifewarden and focused on something else. Or more accurately, somebody else.

In front of Sarah and the rest of her group, the corpses of Undead that remained after the waves Thaden had killed started to twitch, pulling themselves together from where they had fallen apart. She knew exactly what was going on, as she’d seen it multiple times by now as they’d progressed through the dungeon – the Lady Lich was raising the dead. Normally, the Demi Liches they encountered could only do one at a time, but it seemed as though the Mini Boss wasn’t restricted by such a limitation, as she seemed to effect all of them simultaneously.

It also wasn’t fast, as the giant Lich was frozen in place as she held out her desiccated hands toward the corpses with a shadow-tinted mass of energy surrounding them.

“Oh no you don’t!” Thaden shouted, moving toward the now-stationary Lich as he pushed through the pressure bearing down on him. Sarah wasn’t sure how he was even able to stand up by that point, but he not only did but ran at a light jog toward the spellcasting Undead. For the first time since the fight started, icicles started to accumulate upon his robe at an alarming rate, and the Novice Druid figured he had either run out of Mana or deactivated his protection from the chilling magical effect that the Prince was automatically putting out.

With a shout as soon as he was close enough, the crazy man held up his right hand, palm out, as two thick beams of golden light connected his hand to the Lady Lich. Whatever it was caused Lavestina to scream out in pain as she visibly took damage from it, her already frail-looking body cracking and splitting before Sarah’s eyes. Despite the new attack, the spell she was casting to raise the Undead near the Druid’s weakened group continued, until it felt like they would up and moving around at any time.

As for Thaden, the ice crystals slowed him down quite a bit, but every few seconds they would disappear, as if the powerful healer was eliminating with a thought and no visible sign that he had cast a spell. His skin paled under the assault of the super-chilled air, turning blue in places, but other than painful-looking grimaces, Sarah couldn’t see it doing much to him other than slow him down a little.

Just as the corpses of the Undead seemed as though they were going to finish rising from their current state of death, the Lady Lich suddenly screamed so loudly that it literally burst Sarah’s eardrums – and she wasn’t the only one. As the Druid covered her ears, she glimpsed the others in her party doing the same, blood running out of their ear canals.

But that was nothing compared to what happened next. At the crescendo of the Lich’s scream, or so Sarah assumed because she couldn’t hear it anymore, the Mini Boss exploded, blasting out a wave of darkness that passed through the other two Mini Bosses without slowing down. Unfortunately, when it pass through Thaden, he was knocked backwards through the air, his flesh visibly rotting off his body, only to hit the ground a few seconds later in a bone-crunching impact that wasn’t prevented in the least by whatever protection he still had going.

And yet, the powerful healer somehow survived despite his name tag growing so faint she thought he had died, groaning as he got to his hands and knees; all the while, the other two Mini Bosses continued to try and smash him into the floor. His skin was black and still obviously affected by whatever the explosion had done, but a series of spells that were cast so quickly that Sarah couldn’t even follow it passed through him, slowly but surely clearing up the affliction. With a grunt after his body had seemingly healed completely, he got to his feet and turned his attention toward his opponents, continuing his previous bout of attrition against their Health.

All that Sarah could think about was how close they had all come to dying, either from Thaden perishing from the explosion or because they were going to be assaulted by dozens risen Undead monsters. Thankfully, with the Lady Lich’s death, the spell she had begun had stopped, leaving the corpses to stay still and silent, their chance at a rebirth shattered completely.

Less than 30 seconds later, the Prince collapsed into a gigantic pile of bones, rotting flesh, and the ragged cloak that covered it. Upon its death, a powerful wave of pure cold wafted out from it, strong enough to freeze someone solid, but Thaden already had his other protection designed for magic up and wasn’t affected in the least.  Nearly a minute after that, The Royal Companion followed, shattering into tens of thousands of pieces, sending shards and splinters of bone everywhere. One of them nearly killed Sarah as it reached her, cutting a line through her cheek as she barely managed to move her head to the side. By some miracle, hers was the only wound suffered from all three of the dramatic deaths of the Mini Bosses by her immediate party, though she had to admit that the rotting flesh effect that Thaden had been hit with after the Lady Lich exploded was more than enough for all of them.

Somehow, against all possibility, Thaden had survived. Barely survived, but survived he had.

But, of course, that wasn’t the end. They still hadn’t fought the Boss of the dungeon, which was just when the Monarch of the Dead, Nehetmo, forced his Level Compression upon them all again, which felt stronger than before. As she was pressed against the floor, she could barely concentrate as she heard him speak….